To comment directly on an
article, our readers may now visit

Why so many pro-life Catholics backed ObamaIt would appear from the pre-election polls that more than half of American Catholics voted for Barack Obama. How could they do that when their bishops ordered them to vote for John McCain? In fact, no such order was issued, though some bishops came pretty close to it. Most bishops were content with a somewhat obscure statement about the evil of abortion which also urged Catholics to consider all the items on the Catholic pro-life agenda.

Anger, fear will linger after Election Day The key word for those who hate and fear the possibility of an Obama presidency is "Afro-centric." I don't know where they picked it up -- maybe they heard it on the Fox network or read it on one of the Web pages about the ineffable Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But it means the destruction of "our America" as we know it.

Palin, McCain stir up storm of ugly racism 'South Pacific" is a morality play for our time. Sarah Palin is the Ensign Nellie Forbush -- an All-American girl as racist, this time a racist with her eye on the White House. She can stir up crowds to shout "Kill him!" at the mention of the presidential candidate of the other party a couple of weeks before the national election.

China will pick up the tab for our debts China will pick up the tab for most of the $700 billion of the rescue fund approved finally last week just as it has picked up the (almost) trillion-dollar tab for the Iraq war. China is the banker that serves up the gold to pay for most of this country's trillion-dollar debt. The Chinese have replaced the Arabs as the leading lender of money to our impoverished nation.

Why I was wrong about debate outcome I was wrong about the first McCain/Obama debate. A third of the way through the event, I said to one of my guests, "My guy is getting creamed!" Note that I did not say, "My candidate is being beaten into the ground." I don't have a candidate. Priests, like columnists, are not supposed to endorse a candidate. But one of the candidates is from my state and my city, and we shared a pulpit once. So of course I hope he wins. But that doesn't mean I endorse him. As I have said repeatedly in this column, I think he will lose because the country is not ready for a smart, attractive, charismatic man -- if he has skin slightly darker than a Sicilian's.

McCain doesn't grasp cause of finance crisis There are a lot of ironies in the fire as a Republican administration, the most conservative since Herbert Hoover, strives to invest $700 billion to create a socialist financial system. The current president uses the same style of intense concern that was typical in his advocacy of the Iraq War, apparently the only tone he has available for a crisis.

Next chapter for radical right: Burn books
Let's fill some trucks with books, drive them downtown and burn them in front of the Chicago Public Library. Let's drive other trucks to the regional libraries and burn them, too . . . I mean the books, not the libraries, though libraries are the source of the problem. If it weren't for the libraries, it would be hard for innocent young people to be corrupted by the filth pouring out of the country's printers.

Is racism more important than income?
The sudden new vitality in the "born again" political moments has raised the question of the resurgence of "culture wars" -- the allegedly polarizing struggle between the religious right and the liberal left over such issues as gay marriage and abortion and evolution. In fact, the culture wars are mystical, indeed mythological, and they exist only in the interstices of the news cycle --that is to say Never-Never Land. They consist of press releases and statements made by the leaders of activist movements to fill up vacant space and time when nothing else is appearing on the cable networks.

Amazing grace at work in Dems' Denver hugfest The moment during the Democratic convention was astonishing. In my imagination I fell on my knees and muttered the Bible prayer appropriate when one has witnessed a miracle: "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace!" ("Now, O Lord, you may dismiss your servant in peace!") Simon, the holy man in the temple, had seen Mary and Joseph enter the temple with Baby Jesus in their arms and recognized in him the presence of the future kingdom of Israel. Grace had flooded in with the modest threesome. Ever since then, pious Catholics react the same way when God hits them over the head with a surprise that is like a cosmic baseball bat. Such as the decree on religious freedom at Vatican II.

Georgia crisis shows that McCain is scarySomeone is going to have to explain to me the rage of the commentariat and the McCain campaign's rhetoric about Georgia. Will they please tell me how the American invasion of Iraq is different from the Russian invasion of Georgia? Both invaded countries are small and powerless against a giant. Both invasions violate the boundaries of a sovereign nation. Both attacking powers claim that they are trying to protect the lives of their own citizens. Both have little international support for their actions. Neither war measures in on international norms for a just war. Both have imposed death and destruction on the inferior country. Both focus on oil-rich regions of the world. Most of the world sees reckless imperialism at work. When phony arguments about weapons of mass destruction are abandoned, both Russia and the United States take over smaller and defenseless countries because they can do it. Both probably presage sustained guerrilla wars and ethnic cleansing. The United States is hung up in another Vietnam, Russia in another Chechnya.

American warmongers excel at talking a good game
'Speak Softly," said President Roosevelt (T), "and carry a big stick." Sounds like good strategy for a country ready to take on the whole world. Yet for much of its history this country has been just the opposite. Many Americans believe the military power of the country is absolute and the leaders of the country can win any war they choose to enter if they are only resolute enough to push through to victory. In fact, often the bluster is hollow. Wars are lost, we are told, because Democrats surrender. The insistence that "we've never lost a war" persists as a slogan, though often it is the Republicans like Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon who surrender.

Enough of the Games: Olympics are phony
"All the Olympics are a little unnatural, of course, they are genial intervals of make-believe," writes Charles McGrath, the Irish-American litterateur in residence at the New York Times, "when the world pretends to be a happier and friendlier place."

Article takes an unfair shot at Obama
The typical article written about Chicago politics by a journalist from somewhere else tells us as much about this city as does the too-long-by-an-hour "Dark Knight." You come into the city, talk to some of the approved journalists and political outsiders (the so-called independents), clip stories from newspaper archives, and begin to write. Thus American Pharaoh, a biography of Mayor Daley Pere. The metaphor of a sacred king of Egypt for Da Mare would be hilariously funny if it were not so grotesquely irrelevant.

New Yorker misses point
Taint funny! There are two audiences for the New Yorker magazine -- exiles from the so-called Big Apple and new immigrants who have moved into it. The former are people who used to live in New York and have had to move out of it, either across the Hudson River or the East River or the Narrows and are desperate to stay in touch with the politically and culturally correct fashions from Manhattan Island. The latter are the hayseeds who have moved onto the island and do not want to be perceived as hayseeds. Either way, they are snobs. Despite its occasional excellent journalism, its mean-spirited cartoons and turgid short stories are aimed at snobs who want to imagine that they are au courant in the mores of The Island.

Don't heed promises of easy fuel solution
Sometimes Sen. Phil Gramm is not all that wrong about American protests over high pump prices to sustain their behemoth autos as they soak up the oil reserves of the world. Ever since President Jimmy Carter, warnings have been issued about the risks of dependence on foreign oil.

America's unique lamp beside the doorLast weekend, Americans indulged in phony patriotism, accompanied by fireworks and trumpets and pompous voices trying to sound like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. Little attention was given to the people who Americans have oppressed -- the aboriginal people, the African slaves, the hated Asians, Jews and Catholics. Nor was there any mention of the many unjust wars that Americans have fought.

Bush used phony patriotism to start war
The Russians call World War II "The Great Patriotic War." The current longest of our wars could well be called the same thing. It is a war that originated in the orgy of patriotism ("U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!") that followed the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and has been sustained by the patriotism of those who support it ("Our soldiers are defending American freedom") and false promises of some latter-day prophets ("We are winning the war in Iraq.") It is likely to be revived by the Iranian attack that the McCainites see as their main chance of winning the election.

Russert a model for ideal bishopThe obsequies for Tim Russert were a wonderful showcase for the Catholic heritage. They were the celebration of our memory of a man who exemplified the role of a Catholic layman and also a demonstration of how Catholics cope with death.

Caught between a shamrock and a hard place
Most Europeans don't like the EU. They don't want to leave it, and they don't want to destroy it. But they are offended by the busybody behavior of the Brussels bureaucracy as it interferes with their daily lives in their own countries. The last Polish government, headed by Opus Dei members, tried to get traction with the public opinion by attacking the EU and blaming it for Poland's troubles. It didn't work.

Fall election hinges on raceThe end of the longest primary last week was high drama. Some might want to compare it with the work of the great Greek playwrights, such as Euripides and Sophocles, for hubris and catharsis and purification. It is difficult, however, to see how characters such as Harold Ickes, Howard Wolfson and Terry McAuliffe would fit into such a drama. They might be better suited for a Swedish film by Ingmar Bergman or, even better, a surrealistic Italian play by Luigi Pirandello such as "Six Characters in Search of an Author" or perhaps "Right You Are, If You Think You Are."

Church needs to revive its stalled reform
VATICAN CITY -- "You will encounter traffic when you exit to the crypt." The young and very bright preceptor warned as we left the underground tomb of the first pope and entered the crypt of St. Peter's, where most of the popes are buried. We were almost swept away by a crowd of Polish pilgrims, singing loudly (and on key) as they marched to the tomb of John Paul II. He is their great folk hero, and their enthusiasm is justified.

Faith turns ordinary men into great leadersVATICAN CITY -- I went down several levels of archaeological history at the tomb of St. Peter on a recent morning in search of Peter, whom we Catholics believe was the first pope. Only Peter didn't know he was pope and didn't know there was a Catholic church, either. All that would come later. The Peter of the Gospels was no great star. He was a loud-mouth braggart, and he denied Jesus in a moment of crisis. Why did the early Christians commit their devotion to one so undistinguished? Why did Christians try to make a hero out of a man who, yes, gave his life for his cause, but was really not so heroic? Why do Catholics link their respect for their leaders, a respect that often seems idolatrous to others, with such a patently unprepossessing man?

How daydreamers caused Iraq nightmare As the Bush administration winds down, people will reflect on the strange ideas that have emerged during this disastrous era in our country's history. We also will wonder about the arrogant ignorance that shaped the tragedy of the last eight years. It is imperative to consider where the ideas came from that will live after Jan. 20, perhaps through the McCain years.

Why media fix on Wright and ignore Hagee
I fail to see that the envious and bitter attacks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright should have created the crisis in Sen. Barack Obama's campaign when the remarks of Pastor John Hagee have not created a similar crisis in Sen. John McCain's campaign. Why is McCain somehow not responsible for Hagee while Obama is responsible for Wright? I suggest the difference is that the senator from Illinois is a Kenyan American and the senator from Arizona a white American.

Blaming Catholics for bigotry is real biasCatholic racism in Pennsylvania? Seventy-two percent of Catholic Democrats in the heavily Catholic state of Pennsylvania voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton, according to the MSNBC exit polls, and more than half of them said they would not vote for Sen. Barack Obama if he won the nomination. The finding gave me a chill. On the other hand, most Obama voters said they would vote for Clinton if she should win the contest. Is Catholic racism rearing its ugly head again?

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A reasonable response to sex abuse scandal
No one except the hard-line haters of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and British atheists such as the ineffable Christopher Hitchens can find fault with the pope's response to the sexual abuse scandal in the United States.

Bush's victory: Blame the Democrats
The argument in the Capitol last week was about victory. Legislators such as Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham believe, against all the evidence, that victory in Iraq is possible. They insist like puppets that "the surge has been a success" and see signs of victory. The president proclaims that we are winning the war. Gen. David Petraeus says that the progress is fragile and reversible, that there is not yet light at the end of the tunnel, victory is not right around the corner and the champagne is still at the back of the refrigerator.

Greeley: Obama target of sick mindsWhen Chicagoans who know Sen. Obama read the columns about him turned out by the national punditocracy, we tend to gasp and shake our heads in bemusement. He has become an ink blot for sick minds, very clever sick minds. Call up realclearpolitics.com and see what I mean. My favorite recent outbursts of hate come from Thomas Sowell, an African-American conservative economist, and from Naomi Schaefer Riley, the "assistant taste editor" of the Wall Street Journal (which title may be an oxymoron). Both write about Obama's connection with the Trinity United Church of Christ.

An immodest proposal: polygamy for powerful
I wish to advance a modest (and tongue-in-cheek) proposal to diminish if not eliminate the pandemic of adultery among the hardworking, hard driving, sexually greedy business leaders and public officials whose wives must undergo the public humiliation of standing by their erring husbands. I propose that civic and religious leaders make available to such men on application (countersigned by their wives) a license for polygamy.

King David's downfall holds lessons for U.S.
The first reading in Sunday's liturgy suggests a better way to select a leader than the one in which we are presently engaged. All you really need is a prophet, one with a proven record of speaking truth. Then you send him out to wander through the land to search among prominent families. If your prophet finally uncovers such a family and there are many sons, then you must demand that a missing son be brought in. Any really good prophet will know that the handsome kid, who plays a guitar, sings beautiful songs and writes poetry is the one to be anointed. It would save time, money and effort. One would be spared a score of debates, almost as many election night cliffhangers, and the resultant lunatic spins of the professional spin masters -- to say nothing of editorials masquerading as news stories, madcap outbursts on blogs, and masses of vicious e-mails from true believers.

Church failed to adapt in new era
Immigrant Catholicism flourished until 1965. The churches were filled with worshippers, the rectories were filled with priests, the schools were filled with students. Novitiates and seminaries were filled with vocations. New parishes, new schools and new high schools sprung up all around Cook and Lake counties.

When did public figures vote to lose privacy?
During the farce of the "impeachment" of President Clinton by the Newt Gingrich, lame-duck Congress, I urged the position that public people, especially presidents of the United States, had the same right to personal privacy as did every other American. The reason is that their privacy is everyone's privacy. If salacious tabloids and keyhole-peeping gossip columnists can violate the privacy of public people, there is nothing to prevent them from going after the privacy of any one of us. I argue the same position about the unfortunate young women who have become media starlets, taking a stand against those who would destroy their careers and their lives by trolling the cesspools of Hollywood and against the hard-eyed readers who revel in their torments.

Why is N.Y. Times playing gotcha with Obama? I find myself wondering why the New York Times Newspaper (as Jimmy Breslin calls it) is out to get Barack Obama. He is a celebrity, of course, which means that he is a legitimate target for destruction. But why is the Times so eager to take him down?

Celibacy isn't cause of sex abuse
A couple of weeks ago I challenged the conventional wisdom of some Catholic liberals that celibacy is the cause of sexual abuse of children and young people by priests. I pointed out that it was also a problem for married Protestant clergy. What was unique for Catholics was the cover-up by church authorities -- a strategy that worked for a long, long time. Celibacy does not cause abuse, and marriage is not a cure for it.

Fall election will be about Iraq
The election next fall will be about the war in Iraq. This is the issue that most clearly distinguishes Democrats from Republicans.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

What were Clintons thinking?Andrew Greeley: Did the Clintons know what they were doing? I believe that they were unaware what they're doing to themselves by their vicious negative campaign against Sen. Barack Obama. They and their colleagues set out to destroy him by innuendo, distortion and smear.

Politically correct votes absurdIn Chicago, we have a long line of judges to vote for. Because most voters know very little about any of the people on the list, we tend to check the names from our own ethnic lists. I suspect that the Irish were the first to start this process. If we stand before a judge, it's always reassuring to be able to say, "Hey, doesn't my mother know your mother?"

Will voters learn from experience?
Was there ever a more experienced candidate for the presidency than James Madison? He had drafted the Constitution and written most of the Federalist Papers and had served as secretary of state in Thomas Jefferson's cabinet. Yet he was not a successful president. He split the country over the War of 1812 -- New Englanders called it "Mr. Madison's war." He and his wife had to flee Washington to escape the British forces, who then set fire to the White House. His war was the first war that this country ever lost, despite the pretense that Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans after the peace treaty had been signed had reversed the defeat.

Experience no substitute for vision
This man may have had less experience than anyone who ever ran for president. He had little education, no experience beyond his native state, no sense of foreign policy. He served a few terms in the state Legislature and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost in his single race for the U.S. Senate. He was an awkward and ungainly man who dressed unfashionably. His family life was not happy.

We need a better way to choose our leadersDemocrats want to lose elections. The madcap primary races every four years, more insanely self-destructive than ever, have produced a long list of losers: Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter (OK, he won the first time, but he was still a loser), Michael Dukakis, Al Gore. Since FDR, there have been only two winners, John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. (Truman and Johnson were vice presidents who inherited the presidency).

Why Christmas season is time of hopeThere are but two answers to the question of whether hope is valid during this season when we reassert our hope. The first was expressed by Shakespeare's Macbeth -- "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." The alternative was expressed by Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -- "There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth."

U.S. intelligence usually wrong
Would you buy a used car from the so-called intelligence community? Or a used spy? What reason is there to trust a National Intelligence Estimate created by the same crowd that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Are we now to trust those who filled poor Colin Powell's U.N. presentation with what was, if one may not use scatology, rubbish? Mr. Secretary, I knew Adlai Stevenson and you are no Adlai Stevenson.

Priests are happy without wivesIt is time that knee-jerk Catholic liberals give up their knee-jerk response to the sexual abuse problem. "Let priests marry, let them have legitimate sexual pleasures and then they won't become pederasts."

Bishops' message wins few votesIf we are to believe the media, the Catholic bishops warned American Catholics that if they voted for a candidate who supported abortion, their eternal salvation might be in jeopardy. I don't think that's what they really said, but, alas, the bishops generally have a hard time making clear what they actually are saying. The media don't do nuance very well, and bishops have a hard time conveying their intent in words that fit into a 750-word story or a 90-second TV clip. Hence, they add confusion upon confusion, and many Catholics simply dismiss them with a snide comment about the sexual abuse of children.

Researchers miss cause of abuse
I was troubled by the meeting of the Catholic bishops last week, not because the new president and vice president are both Chicago priests. It was a perfect Chicago balanced ticket -- one Cub fan and one White Sox fan, good men both despite the calumny spread about them. It seemed to me, however, that the bishops backed off on both their opposition to the war (consistent, if unheard) and that the people who are doing research for them on the cause of pedophilia were telling them what they thought the bishops wanted to hear instead of what they needed to be told.

New York is no model for America
New York City: This town is a world-class city. Indeed, the case could be made that it defines world-class. It is the artistic, musical, financial, athletic, literary and political center of the world. And I can't stand it!

Two welcome insights from readers
Hate mail is fun. Rarely do the writers respond to what you have written. Rather, they pour forth their own personal venom -- usually scatological or obscene -- because they lack the maturity and the vocabulary to form a rational comment. A single word such as aliens or dictator sends them into paroxysms of filth.

Mukasey would enable power grab
Michael Mukasey, the president's nominee for attorney general, is a very dangerous man. His predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, was an incompetent buffoon, a hack from Texas who launched the campaign to turn the country into a military dictatorship in his "secret" memos ridiculing the Geneva Conventions.

Why
those
who
love
America
are
feeling
brokenhearted
I am
ashamed
for
America.
Note
carefully
that
I do
not
say
I am
ashamed
of
America.
Despite
all
its
inherent
flaws
and
all
its
tragic
mistakes,
the
United
States
stands,
however
incompletely
and
with
whatever
imperfections,
for
the
highest
standards
of
freedom
and
democracy
that
the
world
has
yet
known.

Will we fall
for war vs.
Iran?
It would
appear,
according to
news
reports,
that the
hard-liners
in the Bush
administration,
led by the
vice
president,
are pushing
for a war
with Iran.
The tactics
are the
same. Once
you've
played the
fear card to
start one
war, the
second time
is easier.

U.S. needs
to get back
on track
A nationally
syndicated
columnist
has recently
urged that
Americans
forget about
9/11, become
adults, and
"get back
our groove."
Thomas
Friedman is
the senior
columnist at
the New York
Times and
hence de
facto the
most
important
columnist in
the United
States. That
he
disapproves
of the 9/11
cult makes
it official.
As America's
uber wise
man, he has
certified
that the
national
obsession
with the
World Trade
Center
attack is a
sign of
weakness and
fear. Yet in
the
marvelous
Yiddish
phrase,
"Already,
all right,
enough!"

Why are there no
war crimes
trials?
I've watched two
episodes of Ken
Burns' "The
War." I don't
think I'll watch
any more. It was
young men of my
generation who
fought those
battles. The
kids killed on
Guadalcanal or
storming Monte
Cassino were
only a couple
years older than
I was. Nor will
I read the late
David
Halberstam's
book The
Coldest Winter
about Korea. My
friends died in
that winter
cold. War is
inherently ugly,
destructive,
horrible. The
lives of young
men are cut
short. Parents,
spouses,
friends,
children are
marked for life
by the losses
they suffered.
It is
astonishing that
despite the four
wars of the last
half century, we
Americans do not
remember the
horror. Instead
we blunder into
new wars,
blithely
confident that
it will be easy,
short and almost
bloodless. We
are always
mistaken.
Perhaps we don't
want to
remember.

When will
bias against
'illegals'
no longer be
acceptable?
There are
times when
American
society
tends to
make major
shifts.
Polite
people in
polite
society do
not engage
in certain
slurs,
certain
nasty
stereotypes.
This does
not mean
that the
prejudice
against
Jews, let us
say, goes
away, but it
does mean
that certain
words are
not used --
like the
k-word. And
certain
stereotypes
are indeed
shared --
Jews are
dishonest in
business --
but only
with those
with whom
you know you
can get away
with it. The
n-word is
absolutely
forbidden,
but you can
whisper in
the dark
that blacks
are too dumb
to be NFL
quarterbacks.
Stereotypes
about
Catholics
cannot be
whispered in
most
contexts,
but in
certain
faculty
lunchrooms
one can
still hear
-- quite out
loud -- that
Catholics
just can't
think for
themselves.
Italian
stereotypes
can still be
celebrated
in an
immensely
popular TV
series.

Why won't Bush admit
mistakes?
Last week was a
strange one. The
commander in chief,
the president of the
United States, took
refuge behind a
military field
commander to achieve
credibility with the
American people.
Through constant
repetition of his
name, almost an
invocation, George
Bush built up Gen.
David Petraeus as
the man who finally
found a strategy
that would work in
Iraq. Because he
said it would work,
therefore, it had
worked.

True or false:
Can Bush tell
difference?
Is President Bush able to distinguish truth from falsehood? Is
he too caught up
in the
double-talk
generated by his
spin masters to
grasp the
difference?
After reading
his talk to the
VFW last week, I
think that at
this stage of
his presidency
he is utterly
incapable of
honest
communication
with the rest of
the country.

A church 'scandal' that
isn't
Now, as the poor
battered Catholic Church
tries to recover from a
bushel basket of
scandals, it must cope
with the Mother Teresa
scandal. Someone has
found the poor woman's
private letters in which
she confessed how weak
her faith and love
seemed. Spread around
the world by Time
magazine, the letters
are taken as evidence
that she was not the
saint we all thought she
was. On ABC Evening News
on Friday night, an
itinerant atheist
offered the opinion that
she was a hypocrite.

Suddenly, greed
doesn't look good
In the 1980s, the Reagan Era, an attitude
slipped into the
corporate world,
especially with the
young people who
were pouring into
the financial
services sector:
Greed is good! The
purpose of a
corporation is to
promote the net
wealth of the
stockholder. CEOs
should be rewarded
for producing
stockholder wealth
by huge salaries --
more in a day or
even an hour -- than
their workers earned
all year. Anything
that was not against
the law was virtuous
so long as it made
money. It was the
old laissez faire
notion that
individual and
corporate greed
contributed to the
general welfare of
the economy. The
maximization of
wealth swept away
the idealism of the
'60s. Greed was now
good.

Bush's cloak-and-stagger
folly
The president's comment that the CIA was just guessing is
spinless truth, for a
change. In fact, the agency
knew virtually nothing about
what was happening inside of
Iraq, and hence described
the worst possible case,
just as it was unaware that
the Soviet Union was falling
apart at the end of the
Stalinist era. The best
intelligence about the
Soviets was contained in the
books written at the time by
the reporters from the
Washington Post and the New
York Times.

Bumbling CIA's
failures hurt
America
''The structure
of our
intelligence
organization is
faulty. It makes
no sense. It has
to be
reorganized and
we should have
done it long
ago. Nothing has
changed since
Pearl Harbor. I
have suffered an
eight-year
defeat on this.
. . . I will
leave a legacy
of ashes. . .
.''

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Will we betray our Iraqi
workers?
I see by the papers, as Mr.
Dooley used to say, that the
American ambassador in Iraq is
trying to obtain passports for
Iraqi members of the embassy
staff and isn't having much
success. The United States hires
Iraqis to work for them but does
not want its employees to have
an escape hatch when the end
comes. Homeland Security is
combing the list for possible
terrorists. It might be easier
if the department gave them
passports and then forced them
to live in the toxic house
trailers it has stockpiled for
Katrina victims.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Better bishops would be blessing
"How can the pope say that the
other denominations are
defective when American
Catholicism had to pay $2
billion because of predator
priests?"

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Immigration 'win' is no victory
The screaming mobs of
immigrant-hating nativists are
celebrating their victory over
"illegal" immigrants. Using the
cry of "no amnesty" as a
shibboleth, they have blocked
any opportunity for current
immigrants to gain American
citizenship, which used to be
the goal of "Americanizers."
They have also blocked serious
efforts at border defense, such
as the big wall that was to
stretch from the Ocean to the
Gulf, from sea to shining sea.
They have cut off their noses to
spite their faces when in fact
the 12 million "illegals" have
de facto amnesty.

Friday, July
6th, 2007

Caution
made JFK a great leader
"All war is stupid." -- John F.
Kennedy Although support for the Iraq
war diminishes daily, even among Republican senators, the neocons continue
to write articles about why "we" must stand firm. That's what neocons
do: They write articles and
memos. "We" have an obligation
to the Iraqi people, they tell
us. "We" must stand by them in
their struggle for "democracy."
"We" have a moral obligation to
continue the war...

Friday, June 29, 2007

Ethnic biases stronger than
everAs the 19th century turned
into the 20th, Americans
began to worry about the
stability of their society
and its culture. Strange
languages were spoken on the
streets, strange-looking
people in strange clothes
were shopping in our stores.
Strange smells percolated in
certain neighborhoods.
Strange customs were
appearing on strange
holidays. These strangers
were pouring into our
country. They threatened our
democracy, our way of life,
our culture, our religious
beliefs, our economy, our
blood stock. Why didn't they
stay in their own countries?

Friday, June 22, 2007

Latest Bush Iraq plan will
fail
The vice presidency, John Nance Garner is alleged to have told
his fellow Texan Lyndon
Johnson, isn't worth a
bucket of warm spit. A
lame-duck presidency isn't
worth much more. While
George W. Bush was traveling
through Europe on what
should have looked like a
triumphal journey, back
home, Republican senators
were burying his immigration
reform bill and the
secretary of defense was
confessing that he could not
reappoint Bush's handpicked
chairman and vice chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. Does Bush comprehend
that the public and Congress
are repudiating him? His
jaunty swagger on the shore
of the Baltic Sea does not
look like a man with his
back to the wall.

Friday, June 15, 2007

An ending with
no meaning
I must confess a temptation to
complacent laughter at the
frustration of all ''The Sopranos''
fans at the conclusion of the
series. It was the most important
television project ever, comparable
to Don Quixote, Shakespeare, maybe
even St. John's Gospel.

Friday, June 8, 2007

'Long war'
plan short on substancePlan B is beginning to emerge -- the
followup to the strategy of the "the
surge," which is the current
strategy. The president recently has
been comparing the Iraq war with the
Korean War. Both, he has suggested,
are "long wars.'' The one in Korea
technically continues, and American
troops still are stationed there.
Iraq also will be a long war. Some
folks at the Pentagon whisper that
the Army might start drawing down
troops next year (just in time for
the election!), but half of them or
maybe only a third will remain in
Iraq. Thus, there will be a
timetable of a sort for withdrawing
American troops, which will satisfy
the public, but a refusal to give
up, which will satisfy the president
and his loyal followers.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Hatred of
immigrants is sinfulBigotry never goes away. When it becomes
unfashionable, it goes underground
and waits until a new hate group
appears into which it can project
its twisted sickness. Racism,
anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and
anti-immigrant nativism are chronic
infections in the American body
politic. Rush Limbaugh singing the
obscene tune ''Barack the Magic
Negro'' is inviting prejudice and
violence. However, for pure
irrational rage, the current crop of
nativists are some of the worst to
come along since the Ku Klux Klan of
the 1920s or those God-fearing
Protestants who burned convents in
Boston in the 19th century.

Spain's history of sorrows
SEVILLE, Spain -- Flamenco music, particularly
the songs that accompany the dances (usually
sung by men) reminds me of African-American
blues: Both lament powerfully the sorrows, the
pains, the disappointment of life. The dances
are something like what the Irish step dances
might become if the Irish could reach a state of
abandon -- which, of course, we will never do.
The beating of the feet and the castanets
suggest a vitality that can never be snuffed
out.

Friday, May 11, 2007

History lesson on whom to trust
TOLEDO, Spain -- For a half millennium, give or
take, Christianity and Islam battled for Spain.
Some leaders of both sides believed that the
only good infidel was a dead infidel. Others,
however, on both sides practiced for long
periods of time a pragmatic tolerance from which
we might learn today.

How Chicago can
lose its bid for the 2016 OlympicsLike
most Chicagoans, I believe that this city should
win the big prize in 2009 when they choose an
Olympic site. Only Rio can beat Chicago for the
beauty of its setting. The trouble with its
beaches is that large numbers of teens with
automatic weapons are up in the favillas waiting
for opportunities to terrorize the city. None of
the other contestants has a plan like Chicago's
to put all the venues within a fairly compact
area. Chicago is a fascinating and variegated
city despite the constant putdowns from New
York, which blew its opportunity to have the
Olympics.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Sexist, racism
hurt both students at Rutgers and DukeBoth
the women basketball players at Rutgers and the
men lacrosse stalwarts at Duke were victims. The
former were victimized by racism and sexism, the
latter by reverse racism and sexism. The former
were assaulted by a media culture which seeks to
tear down the barriers of political correctness
and the latter by paragons of such correctness
-- academic faculty and administrators. The
former were victims of their black skin and
their role as women athletes, the latter of
their white skin, thick necks and huge muscles
("farmyard animals," one Duke professor called
them).

Friday, April 13, 2007

Endless war, endless spin:
GOP keeps lying about Iraq
Most of us thought that the last election settled the Iraq
issue. The voters by a substantial majority
rejected the Iraq war. It now appears that Iraq
will be the focus of the presidential election
next year. In an exercise of political
legerdemain almost as ingenious as that which
launched this stupid, inept and immoral war,
President Bush has somehow reintroduced it as
the focus for political debate this year and
next year.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Protestants may yet find
excuse to delay N. Ireland peace
Ireland finally made it big in the American media last week:
front page in the New York Times and three
minutes on the evening news. Protestants and
Catholics had made peace in Northern Ireland.
The heads of both warring political factions sat
at a table with each other and made statements
about political cooperation. Finally, a conflict
that went back to Oliver Cromwell had come to an
end.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Bush team is adept only at
bungling
The Bush administration reminds me of Jimmy Breslin's comic
novel, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
The premise of the novel was what if you had a
Mafia gang whose members were incompetent at the
things that mafiosi are supposed to do.
Similarly, the Bush administration has often
shot itself in the foot because its key players
are not qualified for their jobs. They make a
mess of the job and are protected by secrecy; or
if that isn't possible, by spin.

Friday, March 23, 2007

U.S. attorneys need legal restraintsYears ago, a U.S. attorney said to me:
''We can indict anybody on La Salle Street
we want. Maybe it would be more difficult to
get a conviction, but we still have the
power to ruin him.'' Justice Robert H.
Jackson, one of the Supreme Court's greats
in the 20th century, warned of the power of
the federal prosecutor when he said that the
power is enormous and easily perverted.
''The prosecutor,'' Jackson said in 1940
when he was U.S. attorney general, ''has
more power over life, liberty and reputation
than any other person in America. That power
must be shielded from politics and even from
the Department of Justice.''

Friday, March 16, 2007

Searing attacks on religion
are wholly smoke
On March 4 there were two devastating attacks on religion in
major national media: the Discovery Channel and the
New York Times Magazine, both of which ought to know
better. The former presented a long (and dull)
program, ''The Lost Tomb of Jesus,'' which argued
that Jesus and his wife Mary Magdalene were buried
side by side in a tomb outside of Jerusalem. It
presented dramatizations of the loving couple with
their son Judah.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Betraying the truth
betrays the troopsI see by
the papers that Senators Barack Obama and John
McCain have been "dinged" by the "researchers" (mud
collectors and mud throwers) because they have
asserted that lives and money have been "wasted" in
Iraq. How dare they say that the lives of "our
troops" were wasted? Have they no respect for the
feelings of the survivors of "our troops''? Must one
maintain the illusion that these brave men and women
died for something important, like American freedom
or democracy or to prevent another World Trade
Center attack?

Friday, March 2, 2007

New hope for Catholic
schools
TUCSON -- This is a period when the American Catholic Church is
as dry and dull as the Sonoran Desert. The hope
and joy generated by the Vatican Council is
dead. The separation between the leaders and the
followers has grown wider. The former speak on
many things; the latter barely hear them. The
latter have created for themselves a Catholic
identity based on the resurrection of Jesus,
concern for the poor, Jesus in the Eucharist,
God in the sacraments, and devotion to the
Mother of Jesus; the former hassle them about
secularization and relativism. To the repulsive
sexual abuse crisis, one must now add the
financial embezzlement crisis.

Friday, February 23, 2007

U.S. keeps making mistakes
in Mideast
The collapse of the shah in Iran was the beginning of American
troubles in the Middle East. The shah was "our
guy," an absolute ruler who was secularizing the
country and freeing his people from the shackles
of religious superstition and obscurantism. It
never occurred to our foreign policy thinkers
and experts that the people of Iran wanted their
obscurantism and old-fashioned religion. The
American leadership did not see the ayatollah
coming and was unprepared for the defeat of the
shah. Educated as they were in the great secular
universities, our foreign policy gurus did not
have a clue about the importance of religion in
Middle Eastern countries.

Friday,
February 16, 2007

Be cautious about impeaching BushImpeach the president? Impeach President
Bush? We learned from the attempt to oust President Bill
Clinton that there are few rules for indicting and
convicting a president.

Friday,
February 9, 2007

U.S. needs the strength to be patient We are told that it is a time for
Americans to demonstrate courage, strength, power. We
must not accept defeat in Iraq and the "dire" (favorite
new word) consequences of failure -- such as region-wide
chaos in the Middle East. It is not clear who these "we"
are. Not the senators or columnists or editorial writers
who are calling on us for sacrifice. They are not in
combat themselves, they do not have children in combat.
By what right do they lecture those who do and those who
now perceive that it was the wrong war, carried out in
the wrong way?

Friday,
February 2, 2007

Big spending wins out in our elections You want to live in the White House? You
can buy it for $5 billion! That's what the experts
say the campaign of '08 will cost. It will be split
between parties and within the parties and among
candidates, perhaps $200 million, $250 million for
the winning candidate.

Friday, January 26, 2007

'Babel' babble, or towering insight? The film "Babel" is vehemently
anti-American. Directed by the Mexican filmmaker
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, it won the Golden Globe
from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and a
nomination for the Academy Award. American critics
seemed to miss the subtle anti-gringoism of this
brilliant ensemble movie, a kind of globalization
version of last year's equally brilliant Academy
Award-winner, ''Crash.''

Friday,
January 19, 2007

Bush is a picture of defeat
The presidential address last week was pathetic enough
to make one feel sad for the poor dear man, as they say
in the old country. With little emotional affect he read
a lecture about his ''new strategy,'' which was in fact
nothing more than a new tactic, growled at Iran and
Syria, threatened the Iraqi government, and promised
that the United States would emerge the winner in Iraq.

Friday,
January 12, 2007

Unjust Iraq war raises painful question: Why?
TUCSON -- I become angry every time I see a spread in a local
newspaper of the recent military casualties. They are
mostly young, their lives still ahead of them, victims
of a stupid, unjust, criminal war. Many more have been
maimed for life. I think of the suffering families,
parents, spouses, children whose lives will be forever
blighted by the pain of the death of someone they love.

Friday, January
5, 2007

Saddam execution is stain on
America
Americans cheered enthusiastically last week for President Ford,
who pardoned Richard Nixon. Simultaneously they celebrated the
fact that President Bush did not insist on pardoning Saddam
Hussein -- in fact didn't even think of it. Those who wanted
Nixon behind bars only wanted revenge. Those who wanted to see
Saddam attached to a rope just before he died were not seeking
revenge.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Catholicism absorbing Latino
culture
TUCSON -- The New York Times magazine last Sunday suggested that
American Catholicism is being ''Hispanicized.'' As usual, when
the subject is the Catholic Church, the "good, gray" Times is
tone-deaf.

Friday, December 22, 2006

God shows up where we least
expect
The film "Stranger Than Fiction" has the same structure as a
parable of Jesus. There is a hapless, clueless victim (Will
Ferrell), a powerful personage who can destroy him (Emma
Thompson, who is writing a novel about him in which he will die
at the end), and a "third man" (Dustin Hoffman) who urges her to
go ahead and kill him, it will be her greatest novel. Once she
finds out that she is God in his life, mercy and affection take
control of her and she acts like God. She sacrifices her novel
that he may live and find happiness.
Friday, December 15, 2006

Bush doesn't seem capable of
admitting his serious errors
The long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group was dead on
arrival. It was designed as a proposal by a bipartisan
commission of wise men that would provide President Bush with a
way out of the Big Muddy into which he had led the country.
There was no particular reason to think that any of the major
recommendations would in fact change the situation in Iraq.

Friday, December 8,
2006

.
. . but if he does, he'd better be ready to face nasty
opposition
Should Sen. Barack Obama run
for president? It will be a tough call for the senator and for
those who admire and respect him personally. If he runs, he has
a good chance of winning because he represents what Americans
want in their president at this very troubled time in their
history, a man of firm principles but not an ideologue, a
moderate who can sympathize with his opponent's position, a
modest man with self-deprecating wit, a politician who tries to
bring people together instead of polarizing them against one
another.

Friday, December 1,
2006

Moral health tip to America: Stay out of draft
Rep. Charles Rangel
(D-N.Y.) celebrated the Democratic election victory by proposing
to renew the military draft. His oft-repeated argument is that
the draft would produce an army with social and racial equity.
White, college-educated young men and women would have to serve
as target practice for Shiites, Sunnis and other murderous
tribes in Iraq when they take time out from killing one another.

Friday, November 24,
2006

What is the point of Iraq deaths?
My mother used to
tell me when I was very young a story about the last American to
die on Nov. 11, 1918, at 10:59 in the morning. It was an urban
folk tale of that era, doubtless, though indeed there was an
American who was the last victim of the war. His death was
pointless, that was the sentimental irony of the story. But so
was the death of everyone else who died in that absurd, insane
mass murder. The "Great Powers" of Europe stumbled into the war
because of a toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance and couldn't
find a way out of it. Nothing was settled, the war went into a
recess to be renewed 20 years later with even more demonic fury.

November 17th, 2006

Latest disastrous plan: More GIs
to Iraq
Many of the wise
people in this country who supported the Iraq war at the
beginning now contend that the answer to the problem is to send
more troops to Iraq. Sen. John McCain says that 20,000 more
should be enough. Some of the military "experts" on television
are hinting that 100,000 more will do the job.

Even the "born-agains" may have been part of the Democratic
revolution last Tuesday. In its final pre-election poll, the New
York Times, with its usual religious tin ear, presented but did
not comment on a graph that showed this Republican "base" was
evenly split between Democrats and Republicans in its voting
plans. While exit poll data is necessary to confirm this
finding, it was a strong hint that the house of cards Karl Rove
had created was falling apart.

Why did the United States invade Iraq? The administration, still
claiming to be "tough on terror," dances around in its search
for a credibility-saving way out. Bloody bodies and great clouds
of smoke appear every night on television. American casualties
increase. President Bush no longer uses the words ''staying the
course.'' He still seems to insist that the Iraq war is the
central front in the war on global terror. The issue on this
election eve ought to be: Why did we invade Iraq in the first
place?

It would appear that two weeks before the election, President
Bush may be revising the course as well as staying it. Perhaps
this is the ultimate Karl Rove scam: We will stay the course
until victory in Iraq, but we will set up "milestones" that will
in effect be a schedule for withdrawal. We will have our cake
and eat it too. After all, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
himself has said, Iraq belongs to the Iraqis; it's up to them to
take it over.

After reading my colleague Roger Ebert's review of ''The Queen''
(and it is wonderful that he's writing reviews again!), I decided that I
must see the film at once. I was not much interested in the royals,
empty and useless folk -- though the Brits are welcome to them as a
symbol if they want. But I was very interested in Tony Blair.

My Democratic friends are counting up the number of seats
they're going to win in the election: 16, 20, 35, 50. I hate to
disappoint them, but the Republicans will win in the sense that they
will not lose. Democratic overconfidence, as American as cherry pie,
happens every election year along about now.

They eliminated the parish where I was baptized. They closed the
church where I said my first Mass and took out the stained-glass
windows. Now they've closed the high school seminary where I began my
journey to the priesthood. I understand the need for such measures, but
they've wiped out my past and it breaks my heart.

September 29th,
2006

Seeds of hope in
history of violence
Pope Benedict's remark about Islam, torn out of context and perhaps better left unsaid,
serves as an occasion to note that in the 14 centuries of struggle between Christianity
and Islam, both sides have been guilty of fanaticism. Moreover,...

September 22nd, 2006

Exploitation of 9/11 was
shameful
The remembrance of the World Trade Center last week was an unbearably ugly event, a
national disgrace, another blot on the integrity of the country. Under the deft direction
of the administration and the supine cooperation of television, i...

September 15th, 2006

Presidents
don't end wars they start
Much of the history of the United States in the last half century has involved wars that
the country should not have waged and from which it could not extricate itself. In Korea
the United States mistakenly decided to ...

September 8th, 2006

Greed trumps public good
every time
The anniversary of hurricane Katrina last week reminded me of how difficult it is for this
large, pluralistic and cumbersome country to accomplish goals that most of its people
agree on, more or less. Resources and support must be mobilize...